David Hume (1711-1776) was, amongst other things, a philosopher. In his essay Of Tragedy (included in the Four Dissertations volume) he explores the reasons why humans are so keen on tragedy. Tragic plays include scenes of joy only to better plunge the audience into the next dramatic act. But push the audience – or reader […]
As with many things that I blog about here, a couple of articles and a podcast have come along at once to suggest a change in the air. This time it’s the end of the expectation of free stuff that we’ve come to love on the Net. OK, so it’s not the end of them […]
Martha Lane Fox was appointed by Gordon Brown as the UK Digital Champion, and has founded the RaceOnline2012 campaign to get all people of working age on the Internet (10 million of us Brits haven’t used the Net, but to do so would help us a lot). Lane Fox says that getting the ‘unconnected’ online […]
A note about a great anthology project which should interest writers and readers of Science Fiction, as well as Creative Commons fans (I fit into all these categories, which must be why I liked it so much!). Thoughtcrime Experiments is a paying online anthology of Science Fiction stories (or, more precisely, speculative fiction) edited by […]
Another fascinating – and in parts infuriating – podcast from Sitepoint, who bring in two User Experience Designers to repsond to Ryan Carson’s tweet that “‘UX Professional’ is a bullshit job title. It’s just a way to over-charge naive clients. All web designers should be UX pros”. They discuss the meaning of ‘user experience’, and […]
One of the things that has occured to me about this Engagement lark (and perhaps explains why I’m interested) is that those whose work I’ve read are trying to design systems which encourage the best default behaviour. When any system is designed, it automatically encourages one way of using it more than others, for better […]
As a geeky writer of Science Fiction (or Speculative Fiction when in polite company), and as also as a fan of Creative Commons, my eye was caught by a short story released under a Creative Commons license (Bitly link no longer works). And this was no half measure – the authors want feedback and alterations! […]
The challenge, according to Jack Fuller in the Summer 2010 Edition of Nieman Reports, is ‘to induce people to want what they need’. In this way journalists – and I’d say content producers by extension – can go some way to improve engagement in dialogue with other members of our community, including those with opposing […]
I used Windows for a long time, and then I moved to Linux. I was all fine and dandy until I took a quick glance over my shoulder at the then-new Windows 7. It struck me exactly how Linux and Windows compare in terms of their strengths, and those differences brought me back to part-time […]
Even though it’s still the aftershave your dad wears, and you’ll never buy it, the campaign worked. It doesn’t matter if the product is a dud one (I don’t think the brand mattered here), social media campaigns can win nevertheless.